May I add a voice to those calling for environmental effort? I would go beyond what the others who critiqued “Nature vs. Nature” said (Letters, May 14). The subject is much broader than the remaining few “natural” places (which are really only faint images of past beauty). The subject is the continuing experiments we are performing on the world, with zero understanding of the possible results of our experiments.
Many top scientists and educators have been crying out for us to become aware, and engage our thought processes in what we’re doing. I’ll give just two examples: Ian McHarg, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, in “Design With Nature” (1969, reprinted in 1994 by John Wiley & Sons), and Edward O. Wilson, professor at Harvard University, in “Consilience” (Random House paperback, 1999). Both emphasize that we must engage all learning in planning what we intend to do, not just casual use of some science and technology.
But we still charge ahead with the brainless use of technology, continuing our experiments on the world. We have our stratospheric ozone experiment (which fortunately we are trying to stop) and our global warming experiment, which at least we are finally starting to talk about, and others we are still ignoring (slash-and-burn agriculture to replace tropical rain forests and clear-cut logging to replace the temperate rain forests; overuse of persistent pesticides to test their long-term effect on the human species; continued relacement of prime farmland to build roads and housing, to see how little farmland we can have and still survive).
Thank you for opening up this subject. Now I hope we don’t stop there. Let’s start a longer-term discussion, to engage the brains of more people. If all our brains are involved, maybe we can make a little difference.
— Ed Rogers, Princeton, Ill.
NO COMPLICITY NECESSARY
In commenting in a letter to the editor (May 7) on how his experience in traveling to Poland differed from that described by Fern Schumer Chapman in her fine article “A Small Town in Germany” (April 2), Albert Heber seems unaware that Poland fought on the Allied side in World War II from 1939 to 1945, that Poland suffered the loss of 3 million of its non-Jewish citizens during the war in addition to 3 million Jewish citizens, and that the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, Yad Vashem, honors more righteous gentiles–individuals who assisted Jews during the Holocaust–from Poland than from any other country. Perhaps that is why he found “collective detachment” in Poland from what he assumes was its “complicity.” Nazi Germany needed no help from occupied Poland to commit atrocities against Jews, Poles and anyone else who did not fit its racial and political categories.
— John J. Kulczycki, Professor of history, University of Illinois at Chicago
A SNOWSTORM SAMARITAN
I am an 88-year-old senior citizen and have lived a good part of my life in Chicago. I do remember going shopping with my mother on Maxwell Street (“The Jewish Experience in Chicago,” April 16). When I was 17 years old, I worked in the Loop and had to take a streetcar to my place of employment. I can’t quite remember the year but it seemed in March we had a big snowstorm. Four of us girls started walking south on State to Archer Avenue, proceeding southwest on Archer and getting cold and wet from the snow and wind. A man in a car stopped and asked if we wanted a lift, and as there were four of us we decided it would be all right.
That summer, a man with two suitcases came to our house and asked my mother if she had a daughter, she said yes and then he told her he was the man who had given me a ride on that cold March day and he had some clothes he was selling. I had three brothers, so my mother purchased a sleeveless sport sweater and gave him a dollar. The sweater was $5 and each week he would come and collect another dollar. When the sweater was paid off, another dollar was paid for the second sweater, and so it went until the three sweaters were paid for. Some of our neighborhood friends had pullover sweaters too; I think our Jewish peddler did a lot of business in our neighborhood because of the kindness he showed to some children in distress.
After that, my mother and one of her lady friends would go to Maxwell Street and buy fish for our Friday supper. This went on for a long time, and it showed me that Catholics and people of the Jewish faith can be friends.
— Eleanor Duffin, Justice
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